Over 1,300 flights were cancelled and many other services were thrown into chaos up to major IT issues on Friday, July 19.
GPs struggled to access their records systems, pharmacies couldn’t read online prescription requests, supermarkets reported their IT was down, and some online UK based TV channels were unavailable for a time on Friday morning.
Cyber security firm Crowdstrike said the global IT issues were caused by a defect in a content update and was not a security incident or cyberattack. Company CEO George Kurtz issued a statement to say the issue had been identified, isolated and a fix had been deployed.”
An NHS England spokesperson said: “The NHS is aware of a global IT outage and an issue with EMIS, an appointment and patient record system, which is causing disruption in the majority of GP practices.
Another area hit hard was air travel. Long queues formed at UK airports as flights were delayed.
Meanwhile, Government Ministers said they were monitoring the situation and coordinating responses through the COBRA emergency response system.
There is no suggestion that this was a cyber attack.
Data journalist Joely Santa Cruz told Sky News:
“We saw a rush in reports of Microsoft Teams and Microsoft 365 being down this morning, as people started logging onto computers for work.
This peaked at 7.30am for Microsoft 365 issues with 748 problem reports, and slightly later at 8am for Teams as people started trying to reach each other, with 256 reports.
There also appears to have been a small rise in reported issues with other communications channels including WhatsApp (peaking at 67 reports just after 8am) and O2 (peaking at 71 reports just before 9am).”
The majority of problem reports for Microsoft 365 (57%) related to issues with server connection, while a further 24% were to do with login issues and 20% to do with OneDrive.
The most common issue reported with Microsoft Teams was app issues at more than half of reports, while one-third of problem reports were to do with the website.
Most problems reported with WhatsApp related to sending messages, at 77% of reports, with a further 15% reporting issues receiving messages.
Two-thirds of issues reported with O2 were to do with lack of signal, while 21% were to do with mobile internet.
